Ken Amster has had a varied life. It can best be described as
bi-coastal, with a few years spent in the middle. He was born at
Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., but his family moved
shortly afterward to Palo Alto, California. It was a happening
place in the 1960s, and at an early age he experienced the Bay Area
at its finest. As a kid, he saw Fisherman’s Wharf and Golden Gate
Park. His family later moved back east, where he experienced the
1970s in Washington, D.C., including the first Earth Day, Vietnam
War protests, and the Nixon impeachment. College brought him to
Oberlin, Ohio.
His work experience was almost exclusively in public service. He
completed internships on Capitol Hill while in college, worked at
the Environmental Protection Agency, consulted for the Department
of Energy, and, after returning to California, built a long career
as a defense analyst for the U.S. Navy at China Lake, a small town
on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada.
Outside of work, he pursued adventures throughout the United States
and abroad. He bicycled along the coasts of Oregon and California,
spent several years with a Sierra Nevada mountain rescue group, and
canoed through the Everglades. His overseas travels included
trekking in Nepal, crossing the Tibetan Plateau to Lhasa, visiting
Beijing, walking part of the Great Wall, and exploring the Forbidden
City. He also traveled through London, Edinburgh, Paris, Brussels,
Amsterdam, and Mykonos.
He has been writing for more than ten years but began pursuing it
in earnest after retiring in 2023. Since then, he has completed the
first two Matt Stephens mysteries and is currently working on the
third.
